Gun Happy San Francisco Police Strike Again. Well, Not Quite . . .

Back in March, a brace of San Fran patrol folk responding to a “malicious mischief” call drew their guns and fired at a vehicle backing-up towards them. Allegedly. As sfgate.com reported, “the suspect at the center of a shooting that wounded a police officer in San Francisco’s Mission District did not have a gun on him when the officer was shot. Officer Adam Shaw was hit in the shoulder by his partner, who had sought to shoot the suspect, 50-year-old Jeffrey Ruano, without proper justification, asserted Deputy Public Defender Stephen Olmo.” No news on the official investigation into that one. Meanwhile here’s another, more recent and thankfully less ballistic incident via missionlocal.com . . .

Police officers pulled over a white SUV on Mission Street just north of 21st Street, at 3:10 p.m. today jumping out of their cars and approaching the SUV with their guns drawn, according to witnesses who watched the incident from the sidewalk . . .

Police said they had gotten a tip that someone in a similar car – down to the same SF Giants seal on the back window – was driving around with a weapon. A block away, the Mission was celebrating Cinco de Mayo.

After handcuffing the couple and questioning them on the street, someone appeared to figure out that they had the wrong suspects. While they were questioning the suspects, one officer stayed at the SUV, talking to the toddlers through the window.

Police on the scene said they were still investigating, but the woman, terrified and in tears, was released from her handcuffs. Her husband, Olman Jose Ramirez, was also released and by 3:40 p.m. appeared free to go.

“They pointed a gun at me as if I was a delinquent,” Ramirez, who was also near tears, said in Spanish. “My children were in the back.”

Ms. Galaroso, who did not give her first name, said she was waiting at the bus stop when four police cars converged on the SUV and jumped out with their pistols drawn.

“Excuse me this was just stupid,” she said in Spanish. “There were a lot of people here. All of the kids on the street were so afraid and were running. We could have lost some of them.”

It was unclear how many of the 12 officers in the four police cars on Mission Street had drawn their guns. Some witnesses said four and others six.

I’m a big fan of speed, surprise and violence of action. But that’s AFTER you use common sense, situational awareness, stealth and conflict avoidance. OK, maybe the SFPD were looking for a terrorist with a backpack nuke in the back of his Pathfinder, or some other example of extremely malicious mischief. But I doubt it. You?

I thought that case was somewhat narrowly tailored to suspected DUI (not like it still isn’t a poor decision for the reasons Scalia pointed out).

In any case, I’m not even talking about the legality of the stop but whether it is prudent to conduct a high risk stop on a vehicle based on an anonymous tip and no further information. In some states a third of passenger vehicles probably have guns in them at some point, so I would wonder if the tip mentioned brandishing, aggressive behavior, something. Even in California there are circumstances in which having a gun in a vehicle is not a crime.

The case isn’t narrow at all. The absurdity of the anonymous tip makes it too easy for the police, disclaimer here: I am a LEO, to make up BS about a tip that never happened and never has to be verified. SCOTUS totally screwed this one up.

If it ends up being as widely applied as you say we’re in even bigger trouble. Not just citizens who are the target of someone trying to screw with them but police who will now be expected to spend time and resources dealing with situations for which they see no criminal behavior. The downsides will overshadow any benefits.

NEWSFLASH: This just in:
It is now legal for citizens to stop, frisk, handcuff and detain incompetent brain dead Supreme Court judges on their way to golf matches and dinners at posh country clubs. (sarc)

I just called the police…
I Saw this guy, looked like he was up to no good, clearly a danger to himself and others…
he got into his car with a SUPER SIZED Double quarter pounder with cheese!
those things kill hundreds of people a year!

You know, I’m of the mindset that I’d rather a building blow up because the terrorist couldn’t be apprehended in the bounds of the Constitution then see this repugnant insult to freedom take place. Maybe- I know this will make some folks’ blood boil- maybe we should, you know, let the bad guy win and arrest him legally tomorrow. Maybe a bad guy running around the neighborhood with an illegal gun is a better idea then pointing guns at innocents and Pissing all over our own rights.

I dont know about anyone else, but I’d rather deal with a free society where criminals run amok then a police state with no crime. I can deal with the first situation. The second is intolerable to the human condition.

Same car, same description, same color, same sticker? At some point you have to give the cops the freedom to do their jobs, y’know?

Absent video evidence of the cops behaving badly, I’m inclined to say this is much ado about nothing. Of course the occupants of the car are going to say it was traumatic, and of course the media is going to play up that angle, but given an apparently credible report of someone waving a gun and a matching detailed description, removing people from their vehicle and handcuffing them while the situation is ascertained seems like pretty standard procedure to me. Yes, they were innocent and had toddlers in the car, but is anyone here going to tell me that two adults driving around with their kids in the car somehow precludes them from also having a gun and a temper? If you are, I’d like to introduce you to the guy who road-raged out on me the other day at a stoplight, beating on my driver’s side window and yelling at me to come out and fight him. He didn’t have a gun (that I saw), but he did have a child in the passenger seat.

And yes, I’m fully prepared to have this comment greeted with comments about me being a badge-humper and/or bootlicker. Such is life. Those of you who have been around and know me know better, and the rest of you, well… I’ll just be nice and say your opinion of me is irrelevant.

OK, I’ve checked it twice, still missing it. Where does the report say anything about anyone “waving” anything? Where does it say “gun”? I see a “tip” about a car apparently driving itself with a “weapon”.

Fair answer. I still don’t know how we know the “weapon” was supposed to be a gun, and not, say, a knife, or a cut-down baseball bat, or some such. Would that make a difference in what would be considered an appropriate police reaction?

Blue Chevy pickup. One of tens of millions. Answer is, what is the license number? What is the name of the driver? What is YOUR name and address? Don’t have some of these? The report is bullshit. Acting upon a bullshit report should get EVERY LEO INVOLVED, right down to the radio operator, fired. Forever! It can’t work? That’s what we’ve been told forever about auto safety and mileage mandates, yet they seem to be met.

This was like two blocks from me. Our wife-beating sheriff won’t give me a CCW nor will our chief of police who just doesn’t trust us law abiding citizens with a gun. Yet officers on the street pull this shit.

All due to the change in training due to the fact that certain preferred hiring candidates cannot physically beat down the average perp. So now the standard practice is to pull your weapon at the smallest whiff of uncertainty.

Ya know, I actually predicted this kind of thing a couple or three decades ago when some of those “preferred hiring candidates” were winning lawsuits and making PDs everywhere lower their physical standards. But, silly me, I figured it was mainly going to be more CRIMINALS being shot than would otherwise be the case.

Discussing hiring people of a gender which generally cannot meet the physical standards in place for the past 100 years, then lowering the standards to suit. ie, “you must hire x% women regardless of their qualifications or lack thereof.”

You should never be eager to enjoin a fight….or gunga-gunga, ganunga-danunga.

For the everyday, you, me, and your brother-in-law, 4 police officers at once is usually enough to scare the livin’ shit out of most people. Twelve cops? That sounds more like a SWAT entry team. Have we come to the point where the police officer’s right to go home alive, takes precedent over our right to do the same?

Law enforcement and specifically the way people are screened and selected for those jobs has changed beyond measure from a half century ago. What is now sought after and given preference too are the people who will do WHATEVER they are ordered to do. No thinking, no judgement…just blind obedience to policy and the law AS THEY HAVE BEEN TOLD THE LAW IS….not as the law truly is. In short politicians in power wanted and have created the American version of the Gestapo.

These people are cowards….virtually ALL of them will have a history of being a bully, of being the kid in school that all the smaller and younger kids were afraid of. And anyone who has seen a bully in action knows they are inherent cowards. They ONLY operate from a position of power and control. If faced with effective opposition they will chicken out, call for help or wait for a more opportune moment to strike.

When you hire cowardly bully’s and give them guns the end result is tragic and predictable. You get state sponsored, state sanctioned crime and violence directed against innocent people.

An anonymous tip should be assigned even less confidence than “single-source HUMINT” and the same rules should apply: You never roll on that alone (unless you’re just itchy). They were just looking for action or they’d have waited for the vehicle to enter a less crowded area, possibly outside their own jurisdiction.